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[A Year of Dates] February.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I had originally planned our February date for Valentine's Day... but then we decided to do the Whole30 and I knew there was no way we could do what I planned. So I contacted the company and asked if I could re-schedule and they were super nice about it and had no problem. So we postponed until this past weekend and had a little belated Valentine's Day weekend together.

Back in December, when I was trying to come up with fun, new things that Seth and I could do together, I came across a walking food tour on Living Social. We had such a good time on our walking food tour of Santa Barbara in November that I thought this would be the perfect thing for us, so I bought it.

The Living Social deal gave me the option to choose between 3 different tour options and I chose the walking food tour of Old Town Orange. We showed up on Sunday morning at our meeting spot inside a local Starbucks (meeting at Starbucks - always a good first impression!). We met our tour guide and started off the tour with a little sampling of the new Starbucks caramel flan latte (delicious! - but very similar to a caramel macchiato I thought). The tour guide, Linda, told us a little about what we would be doing, prayed to the rain Gods to let it stop raining (it worked!) and we were off to our first location.

Our first stop was a place that Seth had been wanting to try for forever - Felix's. Felix's is a Cuban restaurant and something I wouldn't typically go for (which is probably why he still wants to try it and hasn't had it yet - oops) but it was delicious! We had an empanada and a fried plantain and it was so good. Seriously, I am excited to go back and try something else!

Our second stop was to Francoli's Italian Restaurant. We started off with an amazing caprese, some wine (which we had to pay extra for - lame), and then some pesto pasta. Everything was delicious but your typical italian restaurant.

Our third stop was to Paris in a Cup. It was a tea place that served tea, tea sandwiches, macarons, and apparently soup because we had baked potato soup there. It was good. Creamy, potato-y, and warm. I bought some macarons to bring home (because duh, I had to get French macrons to try!) and we were off to our next stop - Watson's. Watson's is a little antique store/restaurant. I had been there before, once, to get a cookie one night after dinner and it was super good so I was excited as to what we would be trying this time. I was surprised to find out that we were trying rice pudding. I always envisioned rice pudding to be warm, but this was cold rice pudding, and honestly, it was so good!

Our fifth stop was to a place called Grinders. Grinders is kind of a place that you could describe as a "mut" (like they say about dogs). We taste tested some sarsaparilla, a turkey sandwich, and some sweet potato fries with chipotle dipping sauce. Everything was super good! Except personally, I don't like root beer, and the drink tasted like that to me, but Seth was happy to finish mine. We went inside to check out the place and saw that they sold Thrify ice cream, homemade fudge (the dark chocolate caramel with sea salt was amazing!!!), burgers, fries, sandwiches, and mix and match sodas.

Stop number six on our tour was to Zitos. Zitos is a New York style pizza place that we sampled margarita pizza at. Again, the pizza was good, but nothing overly special. After pizza, we went to stop number seven, our last stop, Cafe Lucca. Ahh, Cafe Lucca. We had the most DELICIOUS gelato to end our tour on. I ordered the chocolate hazelnut and I was not disappointed. The portion looked kinda small, which was to be expected on a tour with a bunch of samplers, but the portion was actually a very decent size. I am still thinking about that delicious gelato!

Overall, we had a really great time and just enjoyed being out together for a date during the day. We met some really nice people who were from a city nearby and were surprised to find that everyone on the tour was from nearby cities (I totally thought we would be the only ones from here on the tour!). I was so happy to be able to spend the day with Seth and just have it be us two. As much as we LOVE being with Mason all the time, it is important for the two of us to connect on an adult level every once in a while, hence my gift to him for Christmas, the gift of time together through a year of dates. We often get so wrapped up in daily life and get into such a routine that we forget that we need to get out alone, and this weekend was perfect for that.

18 comments:

A walking food tour sounds awesome!!! I love all the foods you got to try and yup mtg at starbucks is a perfect start! A day date sounds like a nice fun alternative too. I'm always so beat at the end of the day. The last few times we got a sitter we had her come at like 3pm and were home by 8pm! haha lame but we were much more awake! :)

I. Love. This. Idea!!! Tell me more about how the pricing works. Do you pay for the food tour, and then the food items are additional? Or, does the sample food come with the price of the tour? I'd love to do something like this with Scott - and Old Town Orange sounds like a fun place for us to explore.

How fun!! I love that picture of you two. Your hair is so long (and pretty!) Everything sounds and looks delicious. What an awesome date! You guys went to a lot of places. Where you super full afterwards?

Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm Elizabeth. Wife to Seth and mama to Mason. Lover of Starbucks, chocolate anything, and sunshine. Here on my blog, you'll find a little bit of everything as I navigate through motherhood with a son with autism. Pop around, stay awhile. So glad you stopped by!

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